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Szenes was one of 37 Jews living in Palestine, now Israel, who were trained by the British army to parachute into Yugoslavia during World War II in order to help save the Jews of Hungary, who were about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz. Szenes was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to reveal details of her mission, and was eventually tried and executed by firing squad.

I doubt there is a more common phrase than “the occupation corrupts.” A large number of organizations, activists and writers go to the trouble of filling this slogan with content. Nobel Prize laureate José Saramago argued in the past that “what is happening in Palestine is a crime we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz.” Auschwitz of all places?

At this week's UN General Assembly session, Israel's Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, poured on the rhetoric but ignored the two key elements at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They both stuck to two straight lines in the war of words and we all know that straight lines almost never meet, except in outer space. And until the two leaders start talking in the same plane there will be no peace. Leading off the debate, Abbas actually refused to come to terms with the idea of a Jewish state while Bibi glossed over the Israeli occupation of the West Bank (Judea & Samaria).

Israelis must brace up to terror attacks of one kind or another - it is part of the nation's struggle for survival. None are easy, but some hit harder than others.

Thursday morning 8:38 AM in Kiryat Arba in Judea-West Bank:

Thirteen-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel is sleeping in her bed alone in her home. The summer vacation has already begun and Hallel, an ardent dancer is sleeping-in after performing the night before in Jerusalem.

A seventeen-year-old Palestinian from the nearby town of Bani Na’im jumps over the Israeli security fence built around the community sounding the alarm at the security headquarters. The terrorist races to the nearest Israeli home and enters. It is still not clear if the door or a window was left open. Armed with a knife, he rushes to the children’s' room, where Hallel is apparently still sleeping, and stabs her eight times.

Yazidis are neither Muslim nor Arab, and follow a distinct faith that is abhorred by Daesh. At this very moment, Daesh is perpetrating genocide of 400,000 Yazidi women, children and men, mostly in Syria. Everyone has known it's been going on and now the UN has verified it. Chairman Paul Pinheiro has issued a report by the UN commission of Inquiry in Geneva disclosing:

'Genocide has occurred and is ongoing. ISIS (Daesh) has subjected every Yazidi woman, child and man that it has captured to the most horrific of atrocities. Girls as young as nine are being raped, as are pregnant women. More than 3,200 Yazidi women and children are being held mostly in Syria'.

The Holocaust, the largest genocide recorded in modern history, resulted in the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews and five million non-Jews (including Gypsies, Poles, communists, homosexuals, Soviet POWs, and the mentally and physically disabled) at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. The Holocaust wiped out two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, which had once been nine million, cementing itself as a shameful stain upon the fabric history; while World War II (which involved over 30 countries and more than 100 million people) resulted in between 50-85 million casualties and is remembered as the deadliest conflict in human history.

Is ISIL now perpetrating a massacre of Kurds in northern Syria? Yes, according to Kurdish leaders in both Syria and Iraq. In the past several days, ISIL tanks, artillery and motorized forces have been pounding Kurdish militia in the area near the town of Kobani, which is nearly surrounded except for an escape route north to the Turkish border. An estimated sixty Kurdish villages have been overrun - thirty-nine fell on September 19th alone. Thousands of frantic Kurdish women, girls and small children have been fleeing to the north. Many have reportedly been kidnapped along the way by ISIL. The Kurdish militia are trying to stem the ISIL onslaught, but are vastly out gunned by the Muslim fanatics. President Masoud Barzani, the senior Kurdish leader has issued an appeal to the world before it is too late:

'I call upon the international community to take every measure as soon as possible to save Kobani and the people of Syrian Kurdistan from the terrorists - they will not hesitate to commit crimes and atrocities, therefore, they must be hit wherever they are'.

The past week started with Holocaust Memorial Day and yet again the profound horror and amazement over the Nazi massacre of six million Jewish babies, children, women and men. The vast majority were defenseless and with no one to defend them. The tales of terror told by the survivors who bore witness were paralyzing: crying infants being torn from the arms of their screaming mothers at Auschwitz, of children seeing their parents being beaten and shot before their very eyes. At the memorial service at the Western Wall, President Shimon Peres told of how his beloved grandfather and other relatives, along with the rest of the Jews in his town, were herded into the local synagogue where the doors were locked behind them and then the building was burnt to the ground. The sirens wailed for them and Israelis, with heads bowed, stood at attention.

How did prosecutor Gideon Hausner view his role in prosecuting Nazi criminal Adolph Eichmann who supervised the systematic murder of six million Jews in Europe? What impact did the Jerusalem trial in 1961 have on the Jewish survivors who had to recall their torment when testifying in court? In this exclusive interview with Martha Deane of WOR TV on 1966, Gideon Hausner talked freely about his experience and the trial's impact on the victims. IsraCast presents this dramatic interview by courtesy of Advocate Tami Hausner- Raveh, the daughter of Gideon Hausner.

IsraCast presents an interview with Gen. (Ret.) Aryeh Leib “Eugene” Lebovitz, a Holocaust survivor, retired business executive, and Israeli pioneer now residing in Aventura, Florida. Mr. Lebovitz took time from his recent visit to Israel to visit the IsraCast studios and talk about his efforts on behalf of Israel.

I recently read a hundred-page book by a wonderful American historian who passed away nearly 50 years ago. His name was Will Durant and he wrote many books. He wrote an eleven volume history of civilization, but at the end of his life, he wrote a hundred-page book, The Lessons of History. You should read it. Every line is carved from the stone of truth, and I will give you the bad news and the good news.

The bad news is that when you finish reading this book, you understand that in history, greater numbers rule. They matter. But here is the good news. On page 17, if I am not mistaken, he mentions that there may be exceptions to this rule and that through the unification of a cultural force, that's what he called it, the odds could be overcome. He gives the State of Israel as an example of such an exception.

After leading an Israel Air Force flight over Auschwitz back in 2003, will Maj.Gen. Amir Eshel command an Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities? This is an ironic possibility in light of Iran's relentless drive to acquire atomic bombs for 'wiping Israel off the map'. Fighter-pilot Eshel has now been named the new IAF commander. Israeli born Eshel, aged fifty-two, has forged a brilliant career in the Israel Defense Forces. Known as a 'quick study', he has flown an exceptional variety of combat aircraft from the F-15 and F-16 fighters to Apache and Cobra helicopter-gunships in clocking over 5,500 hours in the air. Reacting to the promotion, a former IAF commander Eliezer Skadi said: 'It's the right man in the right place. Amir Eshel is a true professional with very high abilities that will serve him well at a time the Middle East is on the boil and when new threats are emerging from states that have no common border with Israel. I am confident he will fullfil his command with distinction'. For the past four years, Eshel has headed the IDF's strategic Planning Branch that deals with strategic threats to Israel and the IDF's force buildup. In a rare public address on January 17th, Maj.Gen. Eshel analyzed the threat of a nuclear Iran not only to Israel but to the entire globe. Read the following report of his presentation entitled 'Iran & Global Nuclear Jungle'.

In Tribute To Noah Flug Who Died In Jerusalem On August 11th, IsraCast Presents Recorded Interview and also the Singing Of 'Hatikvah' By Jewish Survivors On Being Released By British Soldiers From Bergen Belsen Death Camp.

Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went into the White House on the brink of a bitter crisis with U.S.President Barack Obama. This time it was not over West Bank settlements but Obama's setting the 1967 border as baseline for a Palestinian peace agreement. While still in Israel, Netanyahu had immediately rejected it in no uncertain terms. Fireworks were in the offing at a time the Jewish state needed U.S. support in the face of a successful Palestinian campaign to acquire UN General Assembly this fall for recognition of a Palestinian state on the 1967 border. However after the meeting, when the two leaders appeared together before the media, both Obama and Netanyahu parted as friends and agreed to work for an Israeli- Palestinian peace agreement despite their differences. Analyst David Essing has this appraisal.

Israeli naval commandos have boarded the Irish ship Rachel Corrie and forced the vessel to change course from Gaza to the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod. This time there was no resistance by any of the fifteen passengers and the Israeli military spokesman said there were no casualties. The ship did not carry any weapons or explosives but tons of cement may not be allowed to be sent on to Gaza. IsraCast Assessment: The Rachel Corrie incident indicates that violence on the Turkish ship Marmara was triggered by passengers and not Israeli commandos. Israel will not lift the sea blockade that prevents more rockets from reaching Gaza where they will be launched into Israel at Israeli civilians.

Fellow Knesset members, there is no more natural an occurrence than for the Knesset and all its factions to unite and mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day of liberation for the Auschwitz extermination camp. The forces of evil sent tens of millions of people - Jews, Soviets, Poles, Gypsies, and political rivals - to an awful death. This wasn't a simple death, but an industry of death, which was borne of an ideology of hate, racism, and ethnic cleansing.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu first caught the eye of the Israeli public when he served as an eloquent Ambassador to the U.N. He has now returned to the General Assembly to make a masterful defense of the Jewish state's struggle for survival, not only in the Middle East, but also in UN bodies that single her for 'special treatment'.

70 years after "Crystal Night", The State of Israel will recieve the original plans of the Auschwitz extermination camp which were found in Berlin last year. Prime Minister Netanyahu will visit Germany next week and will recieve the plans which were published in the German newspaper Bild.

The decision of Pope Benedict XVI to revoke the excommunication on Holocaust denier Richard Williamson has shocked the Jewish world. Dr. Yitzak Minerbi, an Israeli expert on Jewish Vatican affairs, told IsraCast it was a very sad day for Jews who believed in the dialogue with the Vatican.